What always puzzled me about this is that the PPL seemed to be relying on the instructors obtain and make a weather decision.
Exercise 2 "Preparation for and Action After Flight" is rarely taught
and practised (by the student) completely if ever at all, in my experience.
Teaching someone to fly (should) involve a lot more than just the safe manipulation of the controls. Essentially and ideally we should be teaching PPL holders how to exercise "captaincy".
So the moral of this tragic story is always cross check the TAF and Metars with the Form215!
Agreed,
all the available weather information (which includes METARs and TAFs and even looking out the window) should be consulted to build the "big picture".
Also within the PPL how often do we teach a turn back on a flight due to weather? Only last weekend I set off with a student for a land away only 20 miles from our base airfield. As the instructor I knew full well that it would be unlikely that we would be able to complete the task as the cloud base was considerably lower at the destination. About half way we turned back. This was a very useful lesson to see how easy it was to press on into worsening weather and to make an early decision to do a 180 and head back to base.